1. Field
The following description relates to an Ethernet-based optical transmission system, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for controlling remote optical Ethernet equipment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical Ethernet equipment has been increasingly installed for fiber to the curb (FTTC) services and fiber to the home (FTTH) services, while the installation locations thereof are expanding beyond telephone stations to unmanned remote stations, apartments' terminal boxes, utility poles, and manholes.
For example, in the case of a utility pole where L2 and L3 optical network switches are installed thereon, if the L2/L3 optical Ethernet switches have problems due to impact from external factors, such as power outage and surge, or due to traffic congestion or hackers' attack on an operating system of a switch and autonomous recovery is not possible, it is general that an administrator visits the pertinent area and resets or powers on or off the corresponding equipment to reinitiate. Hence, such a visiting of the administrator to the site in person may result in delay in recovery time, as well as increase in operation costs.
To address the above problems, Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2006-36334 discloses a central station apparatus that can initialize remote Ethernet equipment using a physical layer of said equipment. More specifically, a laser driver LD that constitutes an optical module at a central office side is provided with an LD enable pin, and the LD enable pin is controlled to transmit a predetermined on/off repeating signal to a remote optical Ethernet switch, thereby reinitiating a relevant optical Ethernet switch.
However, a system happens to be unnecessarily reset by the predetermined signal pattern that occurs due to instability on optical lines or unknown causes, so difficulties in system operation may be created.